“Lucy.” Bara’s eyes are on her page, but she is holding out her hand for the eraser. I slide it back and she attacks her page with it.

  ***

  Bara and I have fallen into a habit of meeting at St. Marks drop-in for supper. Today she is clearly excited, waves a piece of paper in front of me. “Hey Lucy, look.”

  I catch “Halifax G7 Summit.”

  “This meeting they’re having? They’re going to build a barricade around the waterfront, with concrete and razor wire, bring in loads of police.” She hands it to me. It’s a black-and-white, photocopied brochure. The G7 is meeting in Halifax this spring and the non-government organizations are planning a parallel “People’s Summit.”

  “This here,” Bara underlines a sentence with her finger, reading aloud. “‘Fundamental reform has never been so urgent. The policies of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization are having devastating consequences on our lives.’ So, like, what are these, anyway?”

  “They’re big international financial institutions, formed by the rich countries to keep the Global South in line by loaning them money with lots of conditions attached.”

  I move her hand aside so I can read. “Those in the South are increasingly marginalized and insecure; Canadians are reeling from cutbacks and job loss; workers in G7 countries are scrambling for diminishing work. And Indigenous people, people of colour, and women bear the weight of the financial gains of the few.”

  Bara reaches out to point at “the financial gains of the few.” “This is, like, what you talk about, isn’t it?”

  I keep reading: “It is time to put the G7 ‘rich men’s club’ back into the hands of the people of the world. The present economic system is demonstrably failing to provide for people, failing to measure the pressures on people and the planet …”

  “This is, like, your thing.”

  “Yes, it is.” I give up on reading, drop down the page to scan the list of events: a day of activities and speakers on the Halifax Commons, followed by a march to the barricade protecting the meeting location on the waterfront, a whole week of evening speakers. I look at the list of names and photos. Impressive. People whose books I’ve read for years. “Where did you get this?”

  “I have a friend. She goes to the art college, and they, like, talk about this kind of stuff all the time, the same things you talk about. They were passing these out. So, we’ll go, won’t we?”

  I look at her flushed face, a mirror of the excitement I’m feeling myself. “Definitely.”

  ***

  That evening we sit working at our opposite sides of the table. I think I’ll ask Reverend Peter if I can give my Beast as Capitalism sermon during the G7 Summit. The Beast, after all, has seven heads, for seven kingdoms.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  John congratulates me for being halfway through my six months without breaking my conditions once and, finally, we have a truly warm day. Spring is upon us. I still have my jacket on, but I walk from John’s office to St. Marks with it open to the breeze.

  The drop-in is packed but weirdly quiet, like a funeral. People whisper in groups around the tables, nursing their coffee. In the lineup at the coffee machine, I begin to catch phrases.

  “So young.”

  “On the street.”

  “Sad.”

  “Who was she hanging out with?”

  Someone has left a newspaper on a table, folded back to show a headline. I crane my neck. “Body Found in Alley.” I head out to look for Althea.

  I find her with a group of women in the Single Parent Centre. When I catch her eye from the door, she comes over. “I just got here, Althea. What’s happened?”

  She moves into the hall with me. “It’s Lynn’s daughter, Rosemarie. She’d fallen in with one of the gangs, working the streets.”

  “I wondered when I saw her here before Christmas.”

  “That’s when Judith was helping them figure out what to do. Rosemarie’s pimp was going to move her to Toronto, and she told her mom. The Safe House Network had a place for her in PEI. They were going to slip her out of here today, but she didn’t show up and now her body’s been found in an alley, stabbed.”

  “Wrong person found out?”

  “That’s what we’re thinking.”

  “Oh God, Althea.” I put my arms around her and hold on. After a few minutes, she pulls away, smiles sadly and pats my arm, then turns to rejoin the group in the Single Parent Centre.

  ***

  I retreat to Judith’s basement. I’ve been getting sloppy about checking the house. I’m into the yard before I notice the kitchen light is on. I step back quickly, then cross the street and stand where I’m hidden by someone’s overgrown bushes. Every room on the main floor is lit up.

  Bara comes looking for me. She immediately sees the lights, stops on the sidewalk. I hiss to get her attention. She crosses, slides in among the bushes with me. “Is she there?” she whispers.

  “Must be.”

  I turn to suggest we leave, but Bara isn’t there. She’s gone back across to Judith’s yard, under a tree with spreading branches. A moment later, the crazy child is climbing the tree.

  I look up and down the sidewalk. No one coming, but the neighbouring houses all have lights on, and since the tree is winter-bare, anyone who looks to see why the branches are bouncing could see her. I am relieved when she drops back down onto the lawn and scurries quickly back to my hiding place.

  “She’s there.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Sitting at the kitchen table.”

  “Eating?”

  “No, Lucy. Drinking. She’s got a bottle of single-malt Scotch. I recognize the label, Lagavulin. My dad drinks that to show off. She’s still in her office clothes, with a glass in front of her, and she’s just, like, drinking.”

  I stare at her, but I’m searching my mind for memories of Judith drinking.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you. After that night when she sounded so clumsy upstairs and …” Bara gives me a curious look, but I’ve remembered that she doesn’t know about the bottles on the street and under the sink. “It’s just not something I knew before.”

  But I have found a memory. Judith and I at my apartment, a bottle of wine with the meal. She kept refilling her glass and mine. My head began to turn in those big, slow circles I hate. I tried to refuse. She topped my glass up anyway, so I slowed down, a token small sip now and then. She didn’t. I remember something she said as that evening went on, “Stay away from me, Lucy. In the end, I’ll hurt you.”

  Another memory comes back, a party, election night. A friend, dedicated community worker, ran for office and lost dismally. Judith couldn’t walk home. Bob Cumberland drove her.

  The downstairs lights are still blazing, but now an upstairs one is on as well. Judith’s study.

  ***

  The next day I ask for her at Legal Aid. Called in sick. After school, Bara walks up to the house. She reports that the kitchen light was on, but switched off while she watched, and a minute or so later, the same upstairs light came on.

  The next day we walk up to Needham Street and watch for a while from our hiding spot in the bushes. “I’m worried sick about her, Bara.”

  “Is there anything you can do?”

  “Knock on the door, you mean? Or maybe pop through the door from the basement and ask if she’s okay? Scare her to death on top of whatever else is going on?” I’m trying to lighten us up, but it has the opposite effect. I suppose I could knock on the front door and say, what? That I hear she’s been sick and … what?

  ***

  There is a big funeral for young Rosemarie, lots of people, photos in the paper. Cops will be watching from the back pews, like they always do when a murder’s unsolved. I need something smaller, quieter. I wait a few days for the memorial that the Street Smart drop-in organizes for the other street workers.

  I hear Judith was at the funeral. As soon as I arrive at Street Smart, I scan the room for her. It’s crowded, about thirty people arranged in a double semi-circle in what was once the living room of an old house. Althea is sitting near the door and pats an empty seat beside her. She lays her hand on my arm, squeezes and leaves it there.

  I’ve spotted Judith through the heads in front of me, sitting in the front row partway around the circle. She is dressed in suit and heels, as always, hair shiny and brushed under her modest hat. Her head is bent, but in the brief moments when she looks up, I can see how haggard she looks.

  The Chaplain, a short, plump woman with curly grey hair, is on her feet. “Jesus said: ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life …’” She is dressed in gown, stole and clerical collar. Street Smart memorial services are formal and dignified at the beginning. Most of the street workers won’t go to a regular church, but say the traditions are comforting.

  After the readings and prayers, there is an open session where anyone can contribute memories or whatever else is on their minds. One of the young men working Citadel Hill talks at length about how he took Rosemarie under his wing and tried to protect her. I lean toward Althea and, very softly, whisper into her ear, “Judith looks terrible.”

  She brings her mouth close to my ear. “She’s been home sick all week.”

  ***

  I check at Legal Aid for several days after the memorial at Street Smart. I don’t need to bother the woman at reception. Little magnets on the board beside her indicate who is in. Judith is there. Now that the weather is warmer, I can spend more time outside, but my peaceful place is Judith’s basement, the reading chair, the coloured light of the stained-glass lamp, my books, Nicolás’s Bible.

  I shouldn’t, but I’ve also been visiting Judith’s mysterious study. I’m fascinated with how the piles of paper shift and move, especially the books. Big, dusty tome with a faded cover perches just beside the keyboard and then another day it has joined the semi-circle of paperbacks on the floor around the chair. A slow-motion party for books. Open one with a red cover chats with a tiny one in blue. Faded brown one gets into serious conversation with the computer. One with a picture on the front flutters its sticky notes at a journal. An exhausted one collapses face-down on the carpet, its own weight marking its place, while two hardcovers whisper together in a corner.

  It’s odd. Whole weeks go by when I don’t see Judith, but I feel as if, whatever it is she is doing here, these visits to her study are an ongoing conversation with the inner workings of her mind. I always lift the paper on top of the pile next to the door to see if the “Levellers, Ranters and Diggers” are still there, complete with brown streak on the top page.

  ***

  Bara is rarely at St. Marks for supper or in the lounge at Fresh Start in the evenings. She has friends now, and they’re involved in preparing for the People’s Summit. I haven’t worried about her since we moved into Fresh Start together, but now I find myself thinking about the barricades, the rumours that there will be an attempt to breach them.

  One evening she turns up at the Fresh Start sitting room with Robin in tow. I take in his clothing, every scrap of it solid black. “Oh no. You’re not …”

  “I’ve joined the anarchists.”

  “Oh for God’s sake. The G7, you’re not … ?”

  “Planning something? I’m not free to say.”

  “If your group is going to spoil a peaceful protest by bringing violence into it, shame on you.”

  “Lucy, don’t you get tired of peaceful protests that take months to organize and then the media doesn’t even bother to mention them? No one wants anyone to get hurt, but a little property damage, a little ‘getting out of hand’ …” He makes quotation marks in the air.

  “Do the organizers know?”

  “They know. There’s all kinds of negotiating going on, because they don’t like it, but the streets are public space, man.”

  “That’s not fair. It gives out the wrong message.”

  “Nothing else gives out any message.”

  “You’re maddening.”

  “And you’re mad.”

  “Robin!” Bara gapes at him, shocked.

  “He’s not as well brought up as you,” I tell her.

  “Are you kidding?” says Bara at the same time as Robin roars with laughter.

  “Robin,” Bara takes him firmly by the elbow. “I think we need to talk somewhere else.”

  She pulls him toward the front door. As he leaves the lounge, he says over his shoulder, “Nice to see you too, Lucy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “The Beast Comes Back.” That’s what I call the sermon I give at St. Marks on the Sunday before the G7. Two New Testament readings, from Revelation, ending with the Beast thrown in the sulphurous pit for a thousand years. And then: “For the man who has will always be given more, and the man who has not will forfeit even what he has,” as it says in the New English Bible. But I use the King James Version, because I can’t imagine this passage any other way, always with an echo: “Porque a todo el que tiene, más se le dará; pero al que no tiene, aun lo que tiene se le quitará,” then Nicolás’s notes in the margin: “Jesus understood private property.”

  I use the images I’ve used for years in my teaching to explain structural violence; my favourite, a huge clock, built centuries ago by a master clockmaker. It runs, but no one needs to wind it, or even think about it. Just so, those conjoined twins, capitalism and colonialism, gears operating in the background, eternally taking from the many, giving to the few. The Beast, invisible until it’s challenged. Then it lashes out. I explain non-violent action, peaceful challenge, forcing the Beast to either back down or visibly attack innocents in a way decent bystanders can’t ignore.

  My friends are there, Althea in another huge Sunday hat, smiles encouragement. Robin, dressed in black, grinning at me. Bara with that little frown between her brows and a group of friends, presumably her art college circle. Judith is not there, an empty space much bigger than her physical self.

  ***

  Later Bara confesses that she didn’t understand everything. We sit in the lounge at Fresh Start, the new lined pad filling with Bara’s ragged script, an essay she is trying to write on the choices faced by women in the time of Jane Austen. We talk about women as property until she heaves a sigh. “I have to get back to Jane’s ladies.”

  “Sure.” I move my chair back from the table.

  “Lucy.”

  “Uh hmm?”

  “Why do you only talk about, like, big ideas? You learned all this somehow, and you care about it, a lot. I see your eyes fill up. I see what happens when … anyway, why don’t you talk about the stuff you’ve actually seen and done?”

  “Now you sound like Doctor ‘Tell-me-about-it.’”

  “Maybe Doctor ‘Tell-me-about-it’ isn’t so far off.”

  There is a heavy moment of silence. “Perhaps not. You know that silly expression ‘water under the bridge’?”

  “What’s silly about that? It just means you can’t change the past.”

  “Except it makes it sound like the past goes away.”

  She’s watching me. “He wasn’t just a teacher, was he? The one in Guatemala. Or even just a friend.”

  On cue, my eyes fill up. I use the table to push myself to my feet and retreat to my bed in the basement.

  ***

  Not just a teacher, not just a friend. And Doctor “Tell-me-about-it” isn’t so far off. After Ramón, that terrible day when I knew I’d killed him, Nicolás asked me why I didn’t wail and cry with everyone else grieving his loss. “We don’t do it like that in North America,” I told him.

  “Then how can you ease your grief? How can you share it, carry it together?” And then he surprised me completely. He said, “No wonder you don’t know what your companies and governments are doing.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You are hiding your deepest feelings from one another. Shame keeps you apart, so you also can’t really talk. You can’t figure things out together. It makes you easy to control politically.”

  It was many years before I even began to figure out what he meant, and I still haven’t learned.

  ***

  I love it. Sunny May Saturday, Commons like a carnival, crowds of people in sun hats, carrying skateboards, pushing bicycles and strollers, eating fries, listening to speakers and music. For once, it’s not me ranting about greed and power. Speaker after speaker talks about who has and who hasn’t got access to the world’s resources. Bara walked down to the Commons with me, then took off with her new friends. They’re moving around, handing something out. I find myself a curb to sit on near the main stage, where I can hear the speakers.

  Bara turns up at my elbow. She hands me a leaflet: “World for Borrow Only. At the Youth Perspectives on Our Global Future workshop we expressed our ideas and put them into action.” A list of headings follows: “Poverty and Employment,” “Cultural Diversity and Peace.” At the bottom: “Written by a coalition of youth participants.”

  Bara’s head is cocked back, staring at the speaker, her eyes travelling up and down the woman’s brilliant sari. “Who is she?”

  “Vandana Shiva, scientist and activist, wrote …”

  “She’s gorgeous.”

  Bara’s friends are moving off. A short, brown girl turns and beckons her to come. “Gotta go, Lucy. See you later.”

  “Wait, Bara …” I try to get my feet under me, eyes fixed on Bara’s friend. Young, pretty oval face, brown skin, long black hair tied with a bright, handwoven scarf, definitely Central American. Is it Guatemalan? I need a closer look at the pattern. “Bara, wait …” But the crowd has closed behind them.